Trojan
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Posts posted by Trojan
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and ALL the clubs voted in favour of it
Because Mo stampeded them. Presumably with threats and possibly bribes (for the clubs) of big money. We weren't there, we don't know. What we do know is that it was all decided in a couple of weeks, not really a way to plan long term for a fairly major sport. We're still suffering from Mo. Wigan were still suffering from him when they sold Central Park, fortunately that nice Mr Whelan bailed them out. Who's going to bail RL out?
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good point.
and the challenge cup has problems, which may at least in part relate to SL, but there are other factors as well, not necessarily specific to Rugby League, although if you have a look at the history of the cup pre sl it was won by a handful of clubs. the history of the cup has been one of change-remember the first one was won by batley, then there was the move to wembley, only voted through narrowly.
The challenge cup needs radical thought and action just like in 1929 and no doubt there will be the 'traditionalists' who will oppose such action as they did back then.
In 1987 Fev and Oldham were relegated. Oldham knocked Wigan out of the cup the same season. There is no way that an upset like that would happen today - not Oldham knocking Wigan out, but a bottom SL side knocking out one of the big boys. The playing field has never been level, but at the moment the slope in favour of the big clubs is precipitous. For me all this talk of franchising being a way to expand the game is a red herring. If the expansion clubs threaten the hegomony of the big names, then somehow or other they'll be stamped upon. Unless franchising is abandoned and abandoned quickly we'll really be up sh!t creek. The big clubs don't seem to be able to see that they are digging a pit and sooner or later they, along with the rest of us are going to fall into that pit.
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in 83 many clubs had nothing to play for for a big start of the season because of the dominance of one club. But we also had the much vaunted relegation battles which are the life blood of prom and reg or so we are told. One club-you know the club was: not only in the thick of the relegation struggle, but also in the most romantic fashion imaginable managed to win the cup.
But in those days a club like Fev stood a chance of winning the CC. In fact they did. And in '86 Cas won it, and in '87 'Fax won it. What chance have they got today? None - that's why the CC crowds have declined. And the lack of P&R, of games that matter is why the Championship crowds are declining and why at the lower levels SL crowds are also declining. The spice of the upset has gone from the CC and the edge of P&R has gone from SL anad the Championship. Unless we sort it out one way or another - in ten years there'll be no game to sort out. Steve Fox in this week's LE humourously perhaps, points the way things might go if we go on the way we are going.
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Apologies if its already been stated but there was a GB game at Blackburn.
There've been GB games at the Reebok too, and Loftus Road, for that matter. There were also cup semi finals and JP semis and finals at the old Burnden Park. And of course the old Boothferry Park.
Didn't Wigan play Warrington at Green Bay Packers ground?
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The fact that we're still having this argument three years down the line surely illustrates that large numbers of RL fans are unhappy with the type of game franchising has produced - a game with no "edge" to it.
How would it be if at Wimbledon they'd said to Venus Williams's (or Federer for that matter) opponent, "Sorry kid, but Venus is a regular here, so until you win a few more semi finals we're not letting you play the big one, we're letting her (him) play it instead" Effectively that's what franchising does.
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January 1987, Oldham switched their home game against us to Man City's ground. You're talking about the following season.
Ah. I knew that both League fixtures in the 87/88 season were in '88, because a. I went to both and b. I've a video of the Watersheddings game. I also went to Old Trafford. I must admit I don't remember the Maine Road game. Both Oldham and Fev must have been relegated that season, even though I remember Oldham knocking Wigan out of the cup in the snow.
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To all of the pro franchise people. I can see your argument about the promoted team not being competitive enough etc. but this has been caused by the larger clubs in SL who are running the game getting away with feathering there own nests for years. Remember Gateshull and Shuddersfield mergers, the rules have been consistantly bent to favour the select few since the inception of SL. Why should the bigger clubs get 2 votes to 1??? Could you imagine it in any other walk of life? Like a general election for example? The game is a farce at the moment and needs to be run independently of the likes of Mr Hetherington at Leeds with vested interests in what decisions are made for the game as a whole.
Why not set a pool of cash aside from all of the SL clubs to finance the promotion of a team? Like the parachute payment made to Castleford when they were last relegated, but this time give the newly promoted team the cash to be competitive? Surely that is the best solution and will without doubt strengthen that club for the future. The greater the number of strong teams in the game the better the game will be!
Surely the answer is to make the gap between the top clubs and the bottom smaller not bigger, which has been the case for years. Yes, I'm a Batley supporter, a very small club, but it isn't that long ago we drew with St. Helens in the Challenge Cup and would have won it if it wasn't for a last minute touchline goal by Bobby Goulding to get them the draw. Can you imagine that happening in any sort of competition now between SL and the CH's? Don't you think that is why the attendances for the Challenge cup have dropped? Who the hell wants to watch a game where the result is a dead cert before a ball is kicked? Is the game any better for this gulf in class between all of the divisions? I know the arguement for continually strengthening the top tier is to make the international GB/England team stronger, but has this happened in the last 20 years? Can any of you give me any proof that this has worked in any way? I think not, we are no closer now than we were in the 80's to toppling the Aussies, it could even be argued after the last internationals we are now further away than we were. Have we even looked like winning a Tri Nations tournament or World Cup in the last few years?
How good is it for the sport to be dominated by 2 or 3 clubs for decades on end, is that an exciting prospect for enticing new fans to a minority sport? Wigan dominated in the 80's, Leeds and St. Helens almost exclusively ever since with the exception of an odd couple of years of Bradford doing well? We need to get the balance right and have 14 equally matched teams in SL with promotion and relegation brought back in, giving everyone something to play for, and without doubt this boys club smokescreen, known as the franchised system has to be scrapped. Please pull your heads out of the sand and realise that this franchise system is just a smokescreen to protect the few at the cost of all the others! It is not good for the game. That is the only way to strengthen the international game, by making players play to the best of their ability every week, as you would have a few stars in all of the SL clubs rather than the likes of Leeds, St. Helens etc. dominating the talent pool with enough strength in depth to fill 2 1st teams capable of finishing in the top 4 of SL.
If you think that the game is balanced at the moment, and everyone has a good chance of winning, I ask you how many of you would be willing to bet
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Ive seen...
Oldham v Fev at Maine Road (1987)
I don't remember Fev playing Oldham at Maine Road in 1987. I remember them playing Oldham at Old Trafford in 1988. They played their home league game in 1988 at P O Road and the away game a week later at Watersheddings.
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the clubs that arent in SL deserve to be where they are
Does that include my team Featherstone Rovers? We were in the old Div I and excluded from SL for the now non existent Paris. At the time we were drawing better crowds than Wakefield. Since Wakefield have been in Superleague (in controversial circumstances) their crowds have improved and ours have declined. If we had P&R this season there's a good chance we'd be promoted. But we won't be. If we were promoted and couldn't hack it and were relegated - ce la vie. We'd at least have had our shot, which is more than we've had so far. Promotion and relegation is the meat and drink of British sport. Any game without the carrot of promotion and the stick of relegation loses something for me.
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Well let's cut to the chase Tro.
Dump Crusaders, Catalans and Quins and have two divisions of 10 clubs...
1. Wigan, Wire, Saints, Hull, Leeds, Fartown, HKR, Bradford, Wakefield, Cas
2. Salford, Fev, leigh, halifax, Barrow, sheffield, Widnes, Whitehaven, Batley, Dewsbury
Redistribute the 900K 14 clubs now get as
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There's only ever been about 13 clubs capable of being in the GP and either Leeds have been adrift at the bottom, Rotherham have or someone like Bristol has gone bust. Whoever goes down tends to come straight back up. There's no real relegation battles in the GP save the odd year when someone doesn't do too well and has to overcome the relegation "patsy".
Kear wants to base a whole sea change in opinion on the stregth (or should I say weakness) of one match, his comments are worth the same as Smiths when he wanted SL to reduce in numbers drastically. Two lazy and lousy proposals based on nothing substantial.
There's also of course the example of the crowd for the Wakey/Cas decider in 2006. Plus as plenty on here have testified, it's not the same game without the prospect of promotion or the threat of relegation. Admit it Parky - you're wrong. Franchising will, given enough time kill the game stone dead, then where will your expansion come from?
Promotion and relegation are like the heat in a curry, it's just as nourishing without the heat, but the heat makes it appetising - it's the spice.
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That's interesting. I reckon it's probably very fair to say that based on those figures there's absolutely no reason at all why Rovers couldn't have matched or indeed bettered Wakefield's SL performance. We would have been averaging 6500 comfortably, in my opinion. But we'll never know for sure unless we are given the opportunity.
That is the point. Rugby League crowds are not static with the self same people coming week in week out. They are dynamic. Because whether we like it or not, people die, become too ill or old or infirm to attend any more, or they move away. These missing fans have to be replaced. With new younger fans, but if you're a young potential RL supporter living in Wakey Met, who would you support? Wakey or Cas who are Super League sides and get max publicity and appear on TV fairly regularly, or lowly Fev? - And let's face it until recently we have been pretty lowly. If that night in 1998 Fev had won instead of losing, I reckon we'd have made at least as good a fist of SL as Wakey did. In fact possibly better, because given what happened down the line to Wakey with their financial scandal, and new ground scandal, it's possible they without the SL would have ceased to exist. In the eighties Fax who've been described on here as a "small" club were attracting 8-10k to Thrum Hall. Since their decline their crowds have diminished. The young fans described above have gone to watch the Bulls and the Giants. Whether they can recover I couldn't say. But if they remain in the Championship much longer I somehow doubt it. Halifax was a major RL centre along with Oldham and look at them both today. Unless we can give these clubs' supporters a better hope than that every three years they'll be able to apply for SL, IMO they're in danger of disappearing. All for the tenuous hope of "expansion" - much good it's done us so far.
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well it didn't work for fev in 83
all those relegation battles towards the end of the season and a successful cup campaign-average 2,600
Look at the times though Chris - threatened pit closures, 3m unemployed. People afraid for their jobs, not much spare money - and a Wembley trip to pay for. All explanations. But to get back to the point and John Kear:
""The reason that has made me change my mind about relegation being a performance issue is when you get 10,000 plus at Headingley Carnegie watching a rugby union game
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I also remember Wakefield coming up in 1998. How many times have they been relegated since? There have been several who didn't come straight back down having been promoted to SL, Parky.
Hull, Huddersfield, Hull KR, Cas., Salford
Widnes were only relegated because of the rule allowing Catalans to stay up, they didn't finish bottom.
Taking relegation away is like making a tightrope walker walk along his rope on the ground. Ok he can do it and it takes great skill, and I couldn't do it without falling off. But if he falls off so what? Would anyone pay money to watch him?
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If we could have kept it together for ten more minutes England would probably be the current Four Nations champions.
No we fell apart after an hour. They destroyed us in the last twenty - I was there. It's the best England/GB performance I've seen since the mid nineties. As for their comp being franchised - so what? if that's how the Aussies like their sport ok, most of us in this country don't like our sport in this way - we like winners and for there to be a winner there has to be a loser. The complaint is that the excitement has gone from our comp. due to franchising. So what have the benefits been so far? - Because I'm b*ggered if I can see any.
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I think, to be honest mate, that most people would recognise the days of 'when push comes to shove' as being in a long gone, more amateurish, or perhaps naive, era.
Not that the "wonderful community" has been broken then?
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15/20 years ago we were regularly beaten by Australia, sometimes heavily.
No you're wrong there Parky. In 1990 we came within a disputed referee's decsion of beating them in a series. We gave a creditable performance in the World Cup Final in 1992 and also in the Ashes series that year - also in the subsequent 1994 tour and 1995 World Cup. It's since then that the game has been declining internationally as far as England are concerned.
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'It's killed football'. No it hasn't.
It seems to have killed it as an international sport in the UK. England's performance in the current contest can only be described as abject. The Premier League is effectively an exclusive club that has had billions lavished on it. The perfomance in South Africa is what this has produced. Surely we don't want to go further down this route.
15/20 years ago we looked to have the beating of Australia within our reach. But after 15 years of SL we seem further away than ever. Will the lack of competition for a SL place improve or detract from what for me is the holy grail of any sport - a successful international side? Plus of course the added benefit in the profile of such a sport in the UK. And of course what this thread started to be about the excitement that pulls the fans in.
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I beg to differ slightly Errol, as The People's Game does contain a few errors. Better to try The Roots of Rugby League by Trevor Delaney. Geoffrey Moorhouse's greatest contribution was "At The George" which encapsulates much that you would recognise from WPCTS.
Just one more to recommend highly is "Willie" by Mike gardiner which is a biography of the great Willie Horne but also captures wonderfully the sense of community that made the game what it was. Unfortunately this book can be difficult to track down with EBay offering the best chance.
HTH
Just curious as to why you use the past tense?
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I've just finished reading Ian Clayton and Michael Steele's When Push Comes to Shove. It's made me appreciate that RL is more than a sport; it's an expression of identity. The game symbolises a sense of belonging to a certain place, a certain community. It soon becomes apparent from reading the book that the game epitomises the cultural pride felt in the sport's traditional heartlands. This heritage should be celebrated, protected, and, I would argue, shared.
It was interesting to note, for me at least, that the Welsh have played an important role in constructing this history. One example is that of the stand-off Oliver Morris who signed for Hunslett in 1937 and was a sensation, so much so that he was later signed by Leeds in 1939. When the war started, he joined up and was sent to Cairo. "It's great" he said. "All we do is play Rugby League all over the Middle East". Eventually, he was sent to Italy where he was killed in 1944.
And this is just one snippet from a fascinating book, which is a record of people's experiences in relation to the game and what the game actually means to people. When I went to Wrexham to see the Crusaders play against Wakefield on Sunday and when I saw the Wakefield players run onto the Racecourse pitch in their famous colours, I felt I was able to tap into that rich seam of League history.
You guys who have been brought up with League are extremely lucky - I'm sure you don't need me to remind you of this!
Find out about Ben Gronow - a Welsh convert, the first man to kick off at the then new Twickenham. A member of the great Huddersfield "team of all the talents" And his subsequent treatment by Union.
http://www.rl1895.com/gronow.htm
http://ww1talk.co.uk/showthread.php?2262-B...ow-Rugby-Player
"In 1936 he coached Morley RFC but, due to his RL connection, his name was deliberately omitted from the caption to a photograph in the Club
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IThat will be a reminder of Wakey vs Cas but with a French flavour.
It's not Wakey v Cas he's looking for though - it's a game where something is at stake - like the Union game he cites.
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"The reason that has made me change my mind about relegation being a performance issue is when you get 10,000 plus at Headingley Carnegie watching a rugby union game
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They had to change the rules because of Murphy. In the 1966 CC Final, Wigan's hooker had gone off injured and in those days it was necessary to have an experienced hooker to win the ball at the scrum. With Wigan in possession, Murphy persistently stood offside, the ref penalised him and gave Wigan a penalty - they kicked the ball into touch and at the subsequent scrum Saints got the ball back. The penalty and tap was introduced to prevent this sort of thing. I personally think flouting the spirit of the rules is just as bad as breaking the actual rules. It's true Murphy was a good player, but IMO he should have been cited on more than one occasion with the catch all of "bringing the game into disrepute" Either he'd have packed it in or eventually got a sine die ban.
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How did Doran stay on the field after repeated offences and then Manning is sin binned without hesitation. These refs must realise that decisions like this can turn games especially in the heat. This decision was solely responsible for Widnes getting back into the game. It was a carbon copy of the situation at Widnes when Widnes were helped back into that game. I do believe that was Mr LEAHY also.
I thought that too. Last twenty of the first, and beginning of the second, the ref seemed determined to get them on the scoreboard - and he did. I don't mind what decisions refs give against us as long as they are consistent, there is no way that today's comic could be described as consistent.
Having said that, I wouldn't have given our next to last try - and it was right in front of me.
Kear sees the light on franchising
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
But Warrington, Hull and Huddersfield are not really short of money, are they? Perhaps when the likes of Wakey, or Cas, or Salford knock out one of the big boys the romance will be back. I'm not holding my breath, turkeys don't usually vote for an early Christmas.